


i will depend on you

by kalypsobean



Category: Tales of Graces
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 21:36:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4803023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The message comes from Dalen: <i>Richard will need you</i>. Asbel goes to Barona, because Richard needs him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will depend on you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rose Argent (roseargent)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseargent/gifts).



Asbel finds the letter twisted up in a pile of correspondence that must have been pushed aside and forgotten, somehow, as if he meant to get back to it and then didn't. At first, he wonders why even send a letter, but in the days that follow, as the words echo in his mind and settle around him, as if they could never be taken back or ignored, he understands.

The part that sticks with him most is this:

_I am growing old, Asbel, and soon you will be the one at Richard's side, doing the things he cannot do for himself. There is nobody else whom Richard can trust with this, and you must rise to the task as you have those you have already performed._

Somehow, Asbel had thought that, at some point, he would settle in Lhant, and things would go on around him as they had for his father. It had felt as inevitable as having to marry, and weighed as heavily. The idea that it might not have to stay that way - that Richard might still need him - is both exhilarating and frightening.

 

Asbel leaves Lhant soon after, while he's still not sure what it all means. In a way, it's too soon; he can do his best, and it will be enough, but he hasn't done anything yet but sign papers and stop things falling into disarray. There is nothing to leave behind to promise that he will be back to continue it; he has not built anything, or changed anything.

Perhaps it's because nothing needed fixing, even after the upheavals - the people of Lhant pulled together and repaired the damage themselves, without needing him to tell them how. 

 

Barona is different, now; it's a changeable city, different every time, but this time it feels almost as it did when Asbel was a child. It is busy. It is filled with people from all over Ephinea, most of them in the port and lower city, and the atmosphere is joyous, almost anticipatory, like something is about to happen. Asbel is sure he has not forgotten anything; he checks at the inn, but there are no notices about an event. It is just how Barona is, he decides, or how it is supposed to be. It is Richard's doing.

Asbel wishes, for a moment, he could do the same for Lhant.

He wanders the city for a while, taking refuge in his apparent anonymity as he overhears the shopkeepers talking, the delighted cries of small children, even chatter among the few Knights who remain in the city. He was not unlike them, so recently, but now he has seen things far grander than Gloandi, and instead of the awe it inspires in others, he only finds relief. Gloandi is green, as it should be, the colour shifting within the cryas as the wind rises and ruffles his hair, chills his hands until he has to shove them into his pockets to keep them warm. Things are as they should be; he has not been called here for another great journey.

 

He makes his way to the Castle when the sun is finally setting. He considers sneaking through the Royal Sanctuary, for old times' sake, and perhaps to put off yet another inevitable, but it is still guarded and will be until true dark, and the window was repaired some time ago. Instead, he greets the guards at the gate, and they wave him through without even asking his name; it throws him for a minute, to not be turned away, but he is glad that Richard has thought to make him this welcome, that he can enter as easily as Richard himself.

It is not Richard who meets him, though; Duke Dalen is pacing in the foyer, and for a moment Asbel thinks he is late, that he has let Richard down already. But Dalen, though he raises a hand when he sees Asbel, doesn't stop walking, left to right to left. 

"Richard is in there," he says, waving a hand off to the left, the private part of the castle where Asbel has never previously been allowed to go. Asbel bows slightly, formally, and leaves Dalen to his thoughts. His own are turning again, twisting on themselves as the words from Dalen's letter recur in his mind. Someday it will be him pacing in the foyer, perhaps waiting for someone to arrive with a message, or for a private word before a public audience. Someday, it might be him left to stand beside the throne, running Windor while Richard is fighting a war they have worked so hard to prevent. 

The thought that he might be left behind to guard an empty seat instead of drawing his sword alongside Richard is paralysing; he can only shake himself out of it when he hears Richard's voice from a room off to the side. That time is not now, if at all, he reminds himself. He is not here because there is a war, or a threat.

It will take them all some time to adjust to peace.

 

"Asbel!" Richard greets him fondly, half-rising from an armchair. Asbel is struck, as always, by Richard's poise and how, no matter what, the cape he wears always billows. He can see, from the way his shirt hangs, that Richard has lost weight.

Asbel nods to the maid, quietly standing in the corner, and asks her to bring the food, says that the rest are on their way but not to rush. He will see Richard eat before he returns to the inn.

When they are alone, Richard darts to him, as speedily as if this were a battle. Asbel can feel Richard's hands on his forearms, even through both his coat and shirt. They must be wearing thin, as much as he has worn them, for Richard's touch to feel so warm.

"Is he...?" Richard says, but he can't finish the question; his voice cracks and wavers. His face is serious, drawn tight as Richard's eyes move up and down, as if there would be any sign in Asbel other than the coloured eye.

"He sleeps, for now." Asbel says it calmly, hoping that he can influence Richard to be the same. "He is there, watching, as always, but he is at rest."

The battle took a lot from them all, but perhaps from Lambda most of all. Richard is the only one who can understand, aside from Asbel, and for a moment they are both quiet, breathing the same air.

"You were always better than I," Richard says, eventually. He sits back down and holds his hand out to the seat at his right. Asbel settles into it, pretending to be comfortable just so that Richard doesn't question him further. "You will tell me, when he wakes again?"

When, not if, Asbel notes. "I will," he says. He doesn't say how Lambda fills a space in his heart he didn't know he had, or how sometimes he knows things that he shouldn't quite understand; how he can read Richard so easily because Lambda knows him best of all and it is one of the things that is freely shared between them.

Dalen joins them, with a Strahtan messenger close behind, and the food follows. There is no more time for Asbel and Richard to just be, for now.

It makes Asbel sad, in a way; it won't be the last opportunity, he knows, but they will grow rarer, with time, briefer and more illicit, more deliberate.

But Richard will need him; he and Lambda both, the two who know him best.

 

They will make it be enough, until time passes enough that it can be more.


End file.
